1 00:00:06,320 --> 00:00:16,880 Welcome to the penultimate lecture of the series on humans treaties, but one today we're going to be finishing off one for two. 2 00:00:16,880 --> 00:00:23,480 Scepticism with regard to the senses and moving fairly rapidly through the 3 00:00:23,480 --> 00:00:32,330 next few sections I'm up to and including the discussion of personal identity. 4 00:00:32,330 --> 00:00:40,460 So a reminder of where we were last time we looked at scepticism with regard to reason that street is one for one. 5 00:00:40,460 --> 00:00:47,270 And we saw that Hume presents an argument which he seems to think is a good argument for total scepticism, 6 00:00:47,270 --> 00:00:57,560 though he also says that he himself can't accept it. And his account of that is that belief comes from feeling rather than reason. 7 00:00:57,560 --> 00:01:04,820 And then he one for two, he goes on to scepticism with regard to the senses. That is our belief in external body. 8 00:01:04,820 --> 00:01:13,200 And he's trying to find out where that comes from. He thinks that our ordinary belief in external bodies, that the vulgar belief, 9 00:01:13,200 --> 00:01:23,580 not the belief of philosophers like Locke involves attributing a distinct continued existence to the very things we feel or see, 10 00:01:23,580 --> 00:01:31,620 in other words, to our impressions of sensations so that the vulgar don't draw a distinction between impressions of sensation and objects. 11 00:01:31,620 --> 00:01:36,900 They take it. They are directly acquainted with the objects. 12 00:01:36,900 --> 00:01:46,380 Such a belief, Hume says, it's entirely unreasonable. It can't derive from the senses or from reason, so it must arise from the imagination. 13 00:01:46,380 --> 00:01:56,580 And he sets out to explain how it arises from the imagination, focussing particularly on the constancy and coherence of impressions. 14 00:01:56,580 --> 00:02:08,260 So he thinks the fact that when I look at an object, look away, look back, the perception that I see is so similar. 15 00:02:08,260 --> 00:02:14,980 That leads me to think that there is some uniform thing there right through. 16 00:02:14,980 --> 00:02:19,000 So the very thing that I perceive that directly, 17 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:26,390 I am seduced by the similarity into thinking that it continues to exist even when I'm not perceiving it. 18 00:02:26,390 --> 00:02:36,020 Coherency puts less emphasis on coherence with the example he gives is of a fire burning down where I'm so used to seeing the fire 19 00:02:36,020 --> 00:02:44,320 in the great diminish over an hour or two that if I fall asleep in the middle and then wake up and see that it has diminished. 20 00:02:44,320 --> 00:02:58,750 I, I think of it as a continuing thing because my perceptions are coherent with those that I've seen before. 21 00:02:58,750 --> 00:03:09,840 OK, so scepticism with regard to the senses continued. So let's first of all, look at Hume's summary of the account he's about to give. 22 00:03:09,840 --> 00:03:19,350 When we have been accustomed to observe a constant scene, certain impressions and have found that the perception of the sun or ocean, for instance, 23 00:03:19,350 --> 00:03:27,690 returns upon us after an absence or annihilation with like parts and in a like order, as at its first appearance, 24 00:03:27,690 --> 00:03:33,990 we are not apt to regard these interrupted perceptions as different, which they really are. 25 00:03:33,990 --> 00:03:41,590 But on the contrary, consider them individually the same upon account of their resemblance. 26 00:03:41,590 --> 00:03:50,260 But as this interruption of their existence is contrary to their perfect identity and makes us regard the first impression as annihilated. 27 00:03:50,260 --> 00:03:59,590 And the second as newly created, we find ourselves somewhat at a loss and are involved in a kind of contradiction. 28 00:03:59,590 --> 00:04:09,670 In order to free ourselves from this difficulty, we disguise as much as possible the interruption or rather remove it entirely by supposing that 29 00:04:09,670 --> 00:04:16,620 these interrupted perceptions are connected by a real existence of which we are insensible. 30 00:04:16,620 --> 00:04:23,100 This supposition or idea of continued existence acquires a false and vivacity from the memory of 31 00:04:23,100 --> 00:04:29,820 these broken impressions and from that propensity which they give us to suppose them the same. 32 00:04:29,820 --> 00:04:35,640 And the very essence of belief consists in the false and vivacity of the conception. 33 00:04:35,640 --> 00:04:41,590 OK, so that's a summary of the account that he's going to give. 34 00:04:41,590 --> 00:04:45,490 He gives a four part account. I'm not going to go in full detail through this. 35 00:04:45,490 --> 00:04:54,670 It's enough to have a general idea of what's going on, and I would advise you to read through the text guided by this summary. 36 00:04:54,670 --> 00:05:04,550 Don't worry too much if there are bits of the text that you find confusing as long as you've got the overall picture, that's fine. 37 00:05:04,550 --> 00:05:12,200 OK, so you've got the principle of individuation, how resemblance leads us to attribute identity to interrupt your perceptions, 38 00:05:12,200 --> 00:05:23,300 why we unite interrupted perceptions by feigning a continuing being and then explaining the false and vivacity of conception which constitutes belief. 39 00:05:23,300 --> 00:05:35,810 One important point here a distinction between Hume's treatment of the external world and for example, causation is that in this case, 40 00:05:35,810 --> 00:05:43,070 it turns out that the belief in continued existence that we have doesn't actually involve a genuine idea. 41 00:05:43,070 --> 00:05:50,600 It involves a kind of fiction. And Hume isn't terribly explicit about exactly the status of these fictions. 42 00:05:50,600 --> 00:05:57,530 It seems that he gives them quite an important role in our intellectual life, but it's almost as though there's some third category. 43 00:05:57,530 --> 00:06:00,590 You've got impressions, ideas and you've got fictions. 44 00:06:00,590 --> 00:06:07,280 And the fiction arises from a sort of confusion because we have impressions that have constancy. 45 00:06:07,280 --> 00:06:14,720 In other words, they resemble each other, but they're interrupted, and then we confuse them in our mind because of the similarity. 46 00:06:14,720 --> 00:06:20,990 And that confusion gives rise to this fiction, which isn't actually a bona fide idea, 47 00:06:20,990 --> 00:06:25,820 but nevertheless enables us somehow to support a belief in the external world. 48 00:06:25,820 --> 00:06:39,370 So if you find that a bit confusing? Well, it is human, doesn't really get very explicit on how this is all supposed to fit in. 49 00:06:39,370 --> 00:06:52,130 Another thing that can make the discussion somewhat confusing is that over 15 or so paragraphs of the section. 50 00:06:52,130 --> 00:06:57,170 Hugh explicitly makes a decision to speak with the vulgar. 51 00:06:57,170 --> 00:07:02,840 He says the vulgar do not distinguish between impressions and objects. 52 00:07:02,840 --> 00:07:09,020 They think the impressions just are the objects. So in order to explain the vulgar theory, 53 00:07:09,020 --> 00:07:18,860 Hume is going to refer to that thing indifferently as object or perception as according it as it shall best suit my purpose. 54 00:07:18,860 --> 00:07:22,220 So he's going to speak with the vulgar. He's going to use the same term. 55 00:07:22,220 --> 00:07:29,430 He's not going to distinguish in his explanation between the object and the perception. 56 00:07:29,430 --> 00:07:32,920 Now, if you think about it, that's a very odd move to make. 57 00:07:32,920 --> 00:07:38,160 It's very odd to suppose that a scientific account, because that's what's humans trying to give, 58 00:07:38,160 --> 00:07:44,200 trying to give a psychological account of how a particular belief comes into being. 59 00:07:44,200 --> 00:07:49,900 So it's very odd to think that a psychological account of a belief of ours. 60 00:07:49,900 --> 00:07:55,630 Has to be phrased in the same terms as the believer. 61 00:07:55,630 --> 00:07:58,930 I mean, on the contrary, many explanations of what we do, 62 00:07:58,930 --> 00:08:07,590 how we reason actually require a theoretical understanding of things that would not be at all obvious to the naive thinker. 63 00:08:07,590 --> 00:08:15,640 Right. So Hume here is putting himself in a strange position where he's trying to explain how 64 00:08:15,640 --> 00:08:21,040 our beliefs come about and indeed how they come about by sub cognitive mechanisms, 65 00:08:21,040 --> 00:08:30,860 unconscious mechanisms. And yet he's denying himself the ability to distinguish in that explanation between the impression and the object. 66 00:08:30,860 --> 00:08:39,000 So this is rather a peculiar thing to do. 67 00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:50,680 OK. Now, after he's explained how the vulgar view arises in the way we've sketched, he emphasises that it involves a lot of falsehood and error. 68 00:08:50,680 --> 00:08:58,960 It involves false attribution of identity. We're thinking of the impressions as identical when they're not identical, they're different. 69 00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:04,120 It involves the fiction of a continued existence, which is really false, he says, 70 00:09:04,120 --> 00:09:10,480 but serves to remedy the interruption of our perceptions and experiments reveal that the doctrine 71 00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:16,570 of the independent existence of our sensible perceptions is contrary to the plainest experience. 72 00:09:16,570 --> 00:09:27,400 So this is the key experiment. Press and I with a finger, you will immediately perceive all objects double. 73 00:09:27,400 --> 00:09:36,390 We don't want to attribute a continued existence to both these perceptions, we don't actually think that objects double up when we press our right. 74 00:09:36,390 --> 00:09:44,340 But the perceptions of both of the same nature, they are both produced by our visual senses in the same sort of way. 75 00:09:44,340 --> 00:09:51,390 We clearly perceive that all our perceptions are dependent on our organs and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits. 76 00:09:51,390 --> 00:09:57,480 So he's pointing to a fairly familiar kind of experience or an experiment. 77 00:09:57,480 --> 00:10:08,490 He calls it to say, Look, the vulgar system is clearly wrong in identifying objects and perceptions. 78 00:10:08,490 --> 00:10:11,250 Now, philosophers realise this, of course, 79 00:10:11,250 --> 00:10:21,740 philosophers realise that we do not directly perceive the objects we need to draw a distinction between perceptions and objects. 80 00:10:21,740 --> 00:10:26,050 But philosophies find themselves in a bind. 81 00:10:26,050 --> 00:10:36,760 Hume has argued earlier that there is no good, rational basis for arguing from impressions to objects that calls them. 82 00:10:36,760 --> 00:10:43,240 Remember that argument? We only ever perceive the perceptions, we don't perceive the objects, 83 00:10:43,240 --> 00:10:53,110 so we can't establish a causal connexion between the the perceptions and the object, and therefore we cannot rationally infer from one to the other. 84 00:10:53,110 --> 00:10:58,310 That's why the belief in external objects can't be founded on reason. 85 00:10:58,310 --> 00:11:02,700 But philosophers like Locke are therefore in a difficult position, 86 00:11:02,700 --> 00:11:11,450 they've realised that the they're and that the perceptions are not the objects that the vulgar think they are. 87 00:11:11,450 --> 00:11:18,000 On the other hand, they're very reluctant to give up the natural belief in a continuing existent. 88 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:22,620 So they invent a new theory, not on the basis of any rational argument, 89 00:11:22,620 --> 00:11:34,600 but simply because they cannot relinquish this in this imaginative, instinctive belief in the continued existence. 90 00:11:34,600 --> 00:11:43,990 So they invent a new theory of the existence of perceptions and objects as a palliative remedy remedies this tension that they feel. 91 00:11:43,990 --> 00:11:51,730 But this has no primary recommendation either to reason or the imagination and acquires all its imaginative appeal from the vulgar view. 92 00:11:51,730 --> 00:11:59,140 So it's because we have this vulgar tendency to attribute identity to objects, even though that's completely false. 93 00:11:59,140 --> 00:12:03,160 It gives us a very strong inclination to believe in that. 94 00:12:03,160 --> 00:12:11,220 There is something identical, something continuing. And the philosophers are subject to that. 95 00:12:11,220 --> 00:12:16,230 So in spelling out the points, Hume repeats and expand some of his earlier arguments, 96 00:12:16,230 --> 00:12:22,710 and I've summarised some of the main points here at paragraph 47 is where he's most explicit 97 00:12:22,710 --> 00:12:27,810 about this argument about reason being incapable of inferring from perceptions to objects. 98 00:12:27,810 --> 00:12:36,500 He sketched it earlier. He now spells it out a bit more. The imagination leads naturally to the vulgar view, rather than the philosophical view. 99 00:12:36,500 --> 00:12:39,390 The philosophical view, since it can't be based on reason, 100 00:12:39,390 --> 00:12:47,860 must be acquiring all its force from the vulgar view and various aspects of it can be explained accordingly. 101 00:12:47,860 --> 00:12:49,990 The conclusion of all this. 102 00:12:49,990 --> 00:13:00,250 I cannot conceive how such trivial qualities of the fancy conducted by such false suppositions can ever lead to any solid and rational system. 103 00:13:00,250 --> 00:13:04,570 Philosophies deny our resembling perceptions to be identically the same. 104 00:13:04,570 --> 00:13:08,950 And uninterrupted and yet have so great a propensity to believe them, 105 00:13:08,950 --> 00:13:16,270 such that they arbitrarily invent a new set of perceptions to which they attribute these qualities. 106 00:13:16,270 --> 00:13:24,670 I say a new set of perceptions because it is impossible for us distinctly to conceive objects to be in their nature, 107 00:13:24,670 --> 00:13:28,120 anything but exactly the same with perceptions. 108 00:13:28,120 --> 00:13:34,630 What then, can we look for from this confusion of groundless and extraordinary opinions, but error and falsehood? 109 00:13:34,630 --> 00:13:40,740 And how can we justify to ourselves any belief that we repose in them? 110 00:13:40,740 --> 00:13:47,760 One important point there notice when Hume says, I say a new set of perceptions there, 111 00:13:47,760 --> 00:13:53,760 he's appealing to his empiricism because all our ideas are derived from impressions. 112 00:13:53,760 --> 00:14:00,540 The only conception we can form of external objects is based on impressions. 113 00:14:00,540 --> 00:14:06,240 So when philosophers imagine that there are objects somehow behind the impressions, 114 00:14:06,240 --> 00:14:11,310 actually the only conception they can form of those objects is based on impressions. 115 00:14:11,310 --> 00:14:21,660 So they are effectively inventing arbitrarily a new set of impressions. 116 00:14:21,660 --> 00:14:28,280 So this all looks pretty awful and. 117 00:14:28,280 --> 00:14:36,920 Concluding it is impossible upon any system to defend either our understanding or senses, so he's alluding back to one four one one four one. 118 00:14:36,920 --> 00:14:45,800 He showed that our reason, if followed consistently will actually lead to total lack of belief. 119 00:14:45,800 --> 00:14:51,530 Now he's shown that our belief in our senses in external bodies can't be defended. 120 00:14:51,530 --> 00:14:56,360 We but expose them, father, when we endeavour to justify them in that manner, 121 00:14:56,360 --> 00:15:01,730 as the sceptical doubt arises naturally from a profound and intense reflection on those subjects. 122 00:15:01,730 --> 00:15:07,280 It always increases the farther we carry our reflections, whether in opposition or conformity to it. 123 00:15:07,280 --> 00:15:14,130 Carelessness and inattention alone can afford us any remedy. 124 00:15:14,130 --> 00:15:24,170 So here we have a. The idea that if we think seriously about the sceptical arguments. 125 00:15:24,170 --> 00:15:30,760 We will basically they will completely destroy all our belief. 126 00:15:30,760 --> 00:15:36,010 The only remedy is just to ignore them. So we'll see this later. 127 00:15:36,010 --> 00:15:43,270 Hume says, you know, I dying. I play a game of backgammon. I make merry with my friends and I forget all these sceptical worries. 128 00:15:43,270 --> 00:15:50,710 And it seems to be at least in this mood that humans are saying that's the only way we can avoid scepticism. 129 00:15:50,710 --> 00:15:56,950 If we seriously follow the arguments, they will inevitably lead us to scepticism. 130 00:15:56,950 --> 00:16:05,240 OK, so we've got a radically sceptical message from one for one and one for two. 131 00:16:05,240 --> 00:16:14,030 However, him now he's going to put that scepticism to one side, and he's going to discuss various other sceptical systems of philosophy, 132 00:16:14,030 --> 00:16:23,320 in particular the ancient and modern views of the external world, which I'm going to fairly briefly summarise. 133 00:16:23,320 --> 00:16:32,560 So of the ancient philosophy, that's one for three, he's basically attacking Aristotelian ism, scholastic views. 134 00:16:32,560 --> 00:16:43,300 He picks, particularly on the fictions of the ancient philosophy concerning substances and substantial forms and accidents and occult qualities. 135 00:16:43,300 --> 00:16:52,370 He thinks these are fictions. The most judicious philosophers, such as Locke, 136 00:16:52,370 --> 00:17:00,590 consider that our ideas of bodies are nothing but collections formed from the mind of the formed by the mind of the ideas of the several distinct, 137 00:17:00,590 --> 00:17:09,260 sensible qualities of which objects are composed. But the kind of confusions that he's already explained in one for two lead us to 138 00:17:09,260 --> 00:17:16,420 think that there's some a single thing that retains its identity through time. 139 00:17:16,420 --> 00:17:20,440 We ascribe an identity to the changeable succession. 140 00:17:20,440 --> 00:17:34,000 And so ancient philosophers, the Aristotelian invent this notion of substance or original and first matter giving a name to this kind of fiction. 141 00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:41,230 We also imagine the original substance to be simple and compounded because we're thinking of it as a principle of union. 142 00:17:41,230 --> 00:17:47,680 So when we have these perceptions over time and we run them together in our imagination, 143 00:17:47,680 --> 00:17:52,720 we fail to distinguish between them and think there is something unified to them. 144 00:17:52,720 --> 00:18:01,060 Hume has this idea that the unity over time identity over time actually goes along with unchanged ability, 145 00:18:01,060 --> 00:18:06,160 and the ancient philosophers therefore think that there is something simple and uniform underlying it. 146 00:18:06,160 --> 00:18:15,600 This is where they get their theory of substance. So what is it that makes a difference between different substances? 147 00:18:15,600 --> 00:18:23,280 Well, the the peripatetic the Aristotelian invent this idea of substantial forms. 148 00:18:23,280 --> 00:18:28,560 They think of the qualities of objects as accidents, 149 00:18:28,560 --> 00:18:34,620 accidental qualities like colour and figure somehow in hearing in the substance that they formed is they 150 00:18:34,620 --> 00:18:42,750 have a distinction between the substantial form which kind of coat is the main body of the substance. 151 00:18:42,750 --> 00:18:53,940 And then they think of the accidents, the the perceptual qualities, the colours and so forth as somehow stuck onto this in hearing in it. 152 00:18:53,940 --> 00:19:02,300 But there are no impressions from which these ideas can be derived. So these ancient philosophers are supposing a substance supporting which they do 153 00:19:02,300 --> 00:19:07,310 not understand and an accident supported of which they have as imperfect idea, 154 00:19:07,310 --> 00:19:20,560 the whole system therefore is entirely incomprehensible. At one point, he alludes back to his theory of causal inference, 155 00:19:20,560 --> 00:19:28,360 and we've seen actually the passage one four three nine cropped up when we were discussing John Wright's view of the new hue. 156 00:19:28,360 --> 00:19:37,240 The idea that we when we see RNA followed by a B repeatedly we see RNA, we find ourselves thinking about a B and expecting it. 157 00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:46,540 And we we might confuse that the that the almost irresistible tendency to expect to be when we see RNA, 158 00:19:46,540 --> 00:19:53,920 we might confuse that with the in conceive ability of occurring without B. 159 00:19:53,920 --> 00:20:00,810 And Hume suggests that this happens with the ancient philosophers as well. 160 00:20:00,810 --> 00:20:08,970 The just conclusion would be that we have no idea of power or agency separate from the mind and belonging to causes. 161 00:20:08,970 --> 00:20:12,320 Of course, that's alluding back to his earlier discussion. 162 00:20:12,320 --> 00:20:21,890 But what the ancient philosophers do seduced by this confusion is to invent the words faculty and occult quality. 163 00:20:21,890 --> 00:20:31,400 They need only say that any phenomenon which puzzles them arises from a faculty or an occult quality. 164 00:20:31,400 --> 00:20:36,470 The section ends with a very amusing paragraph, 165 00:20:36,470 --> 00:20:47,360 humans suggested that the ancient philosophers effectively the Aristotelian theory is simply built on fictions of the imagination. 166 00:20:47,360 --> 00:20:55,130 And amongst those are the tendency to attribute to objects the same characteristics that we feel within ourselves. 167 00:20:55,130 --> 00:21:01,760 We've just seen that in the case of this sort of projective idea of causation. 168 00:21:01,760 --> 00:21:09,320 But amongst all the instances where in the peripatetic have shown that they were guided by every trivial propensity of the imagination, 169 00:21:09,320 --> 00:21:15,520 no one is more remarkable. The mayor's sympathies, antipathy and horrors of a vacuum. 170 00:21:15,520 --> 00:21:24,710 There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the very same emotions which it observes in itself. 171 00:21:24,710 --> 00:21:34,250 This inclination is true, is suppressed by a little reflection and only takes place in children, poets and the ancient philosophers. 172 00:21:34,250 --> 00:21:42,830 We must pardon children because of their age poets, because they profess to follow implicitly the suggestions of their fancy, 173 00:21:42,830 --> 00:21:48,540 but what excuse shall we find to justify our philosophers in such signal of weakness? 174 00:21:48,540 --> 00:21:59,310 Rather insulting conclusion to the section. Well, it's quite an important passage, however, because the links with. 175 00:21:59,310 --> 00:22:06,210 A very important passage at the beginning of the discussion of the modern philosophy. 176 00:22:06,210 --> 00:22:11,610 Because Hume points out that it might seem that he here is being very unfair. 177 00:22:11,610 --> 00:22:16,740 Go back to his discussion of induction. And clearly he believes in induction. 178 00:22:16,740 --> 00:22:20,490 He gives rules by which to judge of causes and effects and so forth. 179 00:22:20,490 --> 00:22:30,190 He believes in causal reasoning. But his theory of causal reasoning is entirely built on the imagination on custom. 180 00:22:30,190 --> 00:22:38,500 And yet here he is criticising the Aristotelian philosophers for basing their views entirely on the imagination. 181 00:22:38,500 --> 00:22:48,120 So how can he justify this? In order to justify myself, I must distinguish in the imagination betwixt the principles which are permanent, 182 00:22:48,120 --> 00:22:55,500 irresistible and universal, such as the customary transition from causes to effects and from effects to causes. 183 00:22:55,500 --> 00:22:59,100 And the principles which are changeable, weak and irregular, 184 00:22:59,100 --> 00:23:06,150 such as those I have just now taken notice of the sympathies, antipathy, these horrors of a vacuum, all that stuff. 185 00:23:06,150 --> 00:23:11,940 The former are the foundation of all our thoughts and actions so that that upon their removal. 186 00:23:11,940 --> 00:23:19,330 Human nature must immediately perish and go to ruin. The latter are neither unavoidable to mankind nor necessary. 187 00:23:19,330 --> 00:23:23,250 Also much as useful in the conduct of life. But on the contrary, 188 00:23:23,250 --> 00:23:28,140 are observed only to take place in weak minds and being opposite to the other principles 189 00:23:28,140 --> 00:23:33,330 of conduct and reasoning may easily be subverted by due contrast and opposition. 190 00:23:33,330 --> 00:23:38,990 For this reason, the former are received by philosophy and the latter rejected. 191 00:23:38,990 --> 00:23:41,560 And that's a very important passage. 192 00:23:41,560 --> 00:23:50,330 Hume has shown or thinks he's shown that all sorts of beliefs that we might have thought were based on reason are not. 193 00:23:50,330 --> 00:23:57,680 He wants to advocate some of those. He wants to advocate belief based on custom on induction. 194 00:23:57,680 --> 00:24:03,650 But he wants to reject the kinds of imaginative fictions that the ancient philosophers and here he is, 195 00:24:03,650 --> 00:24:07,790 trying to draw a distinction between different imaginative principles. 196 00:24:07,790 --> 00:24:13,640 Some of them are permanent, irresistible and universal, notably custom. 197 00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:20,560 Some of them are are not. They are capricious, changeable, weak, irregular. 198 00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:25,300 Now we'll see later in in the conclusion of book one, 199 00:24:25,300 --> 00:24:34,510 that this attempt at a distinction comes under serious pressure and because it comes under serious pressure, it actually throws. 200 00:24:34,510 --> 00:24:43,460 It threatens Hume's entire system. But we'll come to that in the final lecture. 201 00:24:43,460 --> 00:24:49,370 OK, moving on now, two of the modern philosophy, we've seen that first paragraph, 202 00:24:49,370 --> 00:24:54,350 the modern philosophy, the philosophy of Locke representative realism. 203 00:24:54,350 --> 00:24:59,510 Claims to be based on the solid, permanent and consistent principles of the imagination, 204 00:24:59,510 --> 00:25:12,240 but Hume is now going to argue that actually it's not that it has profound problems arising from the primary secondary quality distinction. 205 00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:20,760 Now, he thinks that the best argument for the primary secondary quality distinction is derived from the variations of sensory impressions, 206 00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:29,730 depending on our health constitution, situation, etc. So the colour which something appears varies. 207 00:25:29,730 --> 00:25:36,330 It may vary according to the condition of myself. Suppose I have jaundice or something like that, or the conditions of lighting, 208 00:25:36,330 --> 00:25:46,140 etc. So we naturally draw a distinction between the intrinsic qualities of something the primary qualities, spatial temporal qualities and so forth. 209 00:25:46,140 --> 00:25:59,610 And the said the secondary qualities, which are the qualities which it appears to have the visual qualities smell, taste, the sensory qualities. 210 00:25:59,610 --> 00:26:05,280 Now, she is certain that when different impressions of the same sense arise from any object, 211 00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:10,320 every one of these impressions has not a resembling quality existent in the object. 212 00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:15,900 So if you see something from different perspectives and it looks different from those different perspectives, 213 00:26:15,900 --> 00:26:23,220 it can't have qualities conforming to all of those different perspectives because they differ from each other. 214 00:26:23,220 --> 00:26:31,950 Now from like effects, we presume, like causes, many of the impressions of colour, sound, etc. are confessed to be nothing but external existences. 215 00:26:31,950 --> 00:26:39,660 And to arise from causes which in no way resemble them. These impressions are in appearance, nothing different from the other impressions of colour, 216 00:26:39,660 --> 00:26:46,500 sound, etc. We conclude, therefore, that they are all of them derived from a like or origin. 217 00:26:46,500 --> 00:26:55,770 So if I have differing sensations of the same sense about some object, they can't all be truthful. 218 00:26:55,770 --> 00:27:07,010 But since they all come from a similar source, the right conclusion is that none of them faithfully reflect the object itself. 219 00:27:07,010 --> 00:27:18,270 OK. Now, Hume is going to attack the primary secondary quality distinction, and he takes an argument of Barclays, George Barclays. 220 00:27:18,270 --> 00:27:26,520 And what he's going to argue is that we can't actually make sense of objective primary qualities. 221 00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:32,400 So the point of the primary secondary quality distinction is that some qualities the spatial temporal qualities, 222 00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:38,820 things like shape and size, for example, and motion are actually there in the objects. 223 00:27:38,820 --> 00:27:49,830 They are objective properties, whereas things like colour and touch and smell, those are secondary qualities and not really in the objects. 224 00:27:49,830 --> 00:27:54,360 And Hugh tends to think of them as only in the mind. 225 00:27:54,360 --> 00:28:00,390 I think actually, that's a misinterpretation of logic, but let's not get that into here. 226 00:28:00,390 --> 00:28:06,150 So what you means now is going to argue is that actually we cannot form any objective 227 00:28:06,150 --> 00:28:11,580 conception of primary qualities if the secondary qualities are not objective, 228 00:28:11,580 --> 00:28:17,030 then nor can the primary ones be either. 229 00:28:17,030 --> 00:28:27,380 So as the example of primary qualities, Hume takes solidity because when we think of the distinction between an object, 230 00:28:27,380 --> 00:28:33,600 an empty space, it's solidity that distinguishes the object. 231 00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:39,240 Colour is a secondary quality we can't think of, that is an objective thing. 232 00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:44,480 The idea of solidity is that of two objects which cannot penetrate each other. 233 00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:51,380 So understanding solidity requires having some antecedent grasp of what an object is. 234 00:28:51,380 --> 00:28:57,080 And with colour and solidity itself excluded, there's nothing left to give it. 235 00:28:57,080 --> 00:29:03,590 So we try to form the idea of a solid object. We think, oh, well, a solid object is one that excludes another solid object. 236 00:29:03,590 --> 00:29:13,700 Yes, but what is it excluding? Well, it's something spatial. But the only way we can get spatial ideas, according to him, is either from site. 237 00:29:13,700 --> 00:29:23,390 But that involves colour and ideas of colour, a purely subjective, or it involves touch, which again brings us back to solidity. 238 00:29:23,390 --> 00:29:32,500 So actually, we cannot form any satisfactory objective idea of matter. 239 00:29:32,500 --> 00:29:36,640 So Hume elaborates the argument further and then he sums up. 240 00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:42,250 Thus, there is a direct and total opposition betwixt our reason and our senses. 241 00:29:42,250 --> 00:29:43,000 Or more properly, 242 00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:52,690 speaking betwixt those conclusions we formed from cause and effect and those that persuade us of the continued and independent existence of body. 243 00:29:52,690 --> 00:30:00,280 So causal reasoning showed or seemed to show that the secondary qualities aren't objective. 244 00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:08,440 But if we can't appeal to the secondary qualities, it seems we cannot form any coherent objective idea of primary qualities either. 245 00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:14,290 So just going back when I headed that, a causal argument. 246 00:30:14,290 --> 00:30:23,020 Notice that's what Hume is alluding to when he talks about opposition between our reason and our senses is that passage can seem a bit confusing. 247 00:30:23,020 --> 00:30:34,350 But here he's talking about causal reasoning. And here is the causal reasoning that seems to show that secondary qualities are only in the mind. 248 00:30:34,350 --> 00:30:46,580 OK. So that problem, this conflict between reason and the senses will play quite a lot, a significant part in 147 in the conclusion of this book. 249 00:30:46,580 --> 00:30:56,710 So we're we're seeing here a lot of sceptical issues that are going to come back and haunt him later. 250 00:30:56,710 --> 00:31:03,940 Now, one, two, one four, five of the materiality of the soul. This is a section of the treaties that is very often neglected. 251 00:31:03,940 --> 00:31:11,320 If you look at books on Hume, you'll often find they have no discussion of this at all, actually at the time. 252 00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:16,210 It was a very important section in the letter, from a gentleman to his friend in Edinburgh, 253 00:31:16,210 --> 00:31:24,400 where Hume is responding to an abusive pamphlet which accused him of all sorts of appalling atheistic views. 254 00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:38,080 One for five featured quite strongly. We saw one, four five actually in the first lecture, and we'll come back to that shortly. 255 00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:42,760 Interestingly, when Hume starts out in one, four five, 256 00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:49,390 he seems to be much more optimistic about giving a good account of the mind than he does of matter. 257 00:31:49,390 --> 00:31:57,220 We've seen that in one four two one four three one four four. His theory of matter is very sceptical indeed. 258 00:31:57,220 --> 00:32:02,880 But now he's turning to the internal world to our minds. 259 00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:08,040 And he says that there won't be any such contradictions here. 260 00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:12,450 That remains the case until the appendix published in 1740, 261 00:32:12,450 --> 00:32:19,650 where Hume actually discovered that there were real problems, though he's not very clear about what they are. 262 00:32:19,650 --> 00:32:24,210 OK, so he starts off in one for five after that initial paragraph, 263 00:32:24,210 --> 00:32:31,680 he attacks the notion of mental substance and the related notion of inhibition, the usual stuff. 264 00:32:31,680 --> 00:32:41,930 There's no impression from which substance or invasion those ideas could be copied, so we don't have any such ideas. 265 00:32:41,930 --> 00:32:49,130 Well, someone might try to evade that by saying we do have a notion of a substance, but we don't get the notion of a substance from an impression. 266 00:32:49,130 --> 00:32:56,300 It's not an idea that's copied from an impression. What we mean by a substance is something which may exist by itself. 267 00:32:56,300 --> 00:33:02,230 So we've got, as it were a definite description of what substance is. 268 00:33:02,230 --> 00:33:08,350 And we have this paragraph where Hume says the trouble with that definition is that according to that definition, 269 00:33:08,350 --> 00:33:16,810 every one of our perceptions will count as a substance. Now, this is very peculiar humans using the severability principle, 270 00:33:16,810 --> 00:33:23,760 the idea that anything that we can separate in our minds is really distinct and could be separated. 271 00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:30,410 To argue that any one of our impressions could, in principle, exist by itself. 272 00:33:30,410 --> 00:33:37,790 Outside of our mind. That seems very, very peculiar and probably incoherent. 273 00:33:37,790 --> 00:33:44,000 But this features quite a lot in this section and the next on personal identity, 274 00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:49,910 so it's worth bearing in mind what a strange view of perceptions Hugh has. 275 00:33:49,910 --> 00:33:57,270 He thinks that our ideas and impressions could, in principle, reside outside of mind. 276 00:33:57,270 --> 00:34:07,560 We'll come to his theory of mines before long, which helps to make some sense of that. 277 00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:15,330 Over a number of paragraphs, about a dozen paragraphs, Hume discusses the issue, sorry, 10 paragraphs. 278 00:34:15,330 --> 00:34:20,870 Hume discusses the issue of location and extension of perceptions. 279 00:34:20,870 --> 00:34:24,120 This is quite an important part to read. 280 00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:34,920 It helps to throw light on the argument we've just discussed from one four four where Hume is talking about where our idea of solidity comes from, 281 00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:42,730 the idea we have of a solid body as based on either visual or tactile perceptions. 282 00:34:42,730 --> 00:34:50,820 Because he's going to say that perceptions that aren't visual or tactile actually have no location. 283 00:34:50,820 --> 00:34:55,500 So an object may exist and yet be nowhere. 284 00:34:55,500 --> 00:35:05,850 And it's here that Hume was referring when in one three two going way back when he discussed the nature of our idea of causation. 285 00:35:05,850 --> 00:35:14,460 And you know, he starts off saying that causation involves priority in time, of course, to affect and also contiguity. 286 00:35:14,460 --> 00:35:18,300 And at that point, he puts in a footnote saying, we'll see later. 287 00:35:18,300 --> 00:35:24,660 There's an issue here. This is the issue. You can have causation between mental perceptions, 288 00:35:24,660 --> 00:35:34,750 even though those mental perceptions have no physical location and therefore cannot have physical contiguity. 289 00:35:34,750 --> 00:35:44,230 There's also a passage here that he's referred to from another footnote in one 14 where he's discussing the idea of necessary connexion. 290 00:35:44,230 --> 00:35:50,200 And it seems to very much support the sort of subjective it claims that he's making there. 291 00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:59,740 He says it's just a mistake, an illusion when we think of the taste of a fig as actually physically located inside the fig. 292 00:35:59,740 --> 00:36:06,040 And the cross reference seems to imply we're making the same sort of mistake when we attribute power to objects. 293 00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:08,530 That's something that simply couldn't exist there. 294 00:36:08,530 --> 00:36:20,210 So we've talked about all the apparent subjective ism in one three 14 before, but this is an important passage to which he's referring. 295 00:36:20,210 --> 00:36:28,490 OK, we've got a dozen paragraphs, which I wouldn't worry about reading in detail, but skate through them. 296 00:36:28,490 --> 00:36:39,010 Humans having a bit of fun with Spinoza. Spinoza has this supposed hideous hypothesis, which everybody thinks is appalling. 297 00:36:39,010 --> 00:36:49,810 The idea that the world is just one single thing and that all the objects in the world are modifications of this simple substance. 298 00:36:49,810 --> 00:37:01,870 He talk so Spinoza is noted for talking about God or nature and identifying God with nature, which is this single thing. 299 00:37:01,870 --> 00:37:07,110 And this is supposed to be awful and atheistic and such like. 300 00:37:07,110 --> 00:37:15,940 And what humans noticed is that there's an analogy between Espinosa's view of the world and many Orthodox people's view of the mind. 301 00:37:15,940 --> 00:37:18,940 Because people think of the mind as being a simple, 302 00:37:18,940 --> 00:37:30,780 unchanging substance that somehow nevertheless has mode's properties which are our ideas and our impressions. 303 00:37:30,780 --> 00:37:44,070 And Hume is pointing out that exactly the same kind of objections that could be put against Spinoza can be put against this view of the the the mind. 304 00:37:44,070 --> 00:37:50,790 OK, so that's just a very quick summary of the of the early parts of 145. 305 00:37:50,790 --> 00:37:59,880 The most important part of 145 I discussed in our first lecture, and it's where he attacks the anti materialist argument, 306 00:37:59,880 --> 00:38:08,710 the argument that have been used against Hobbs to say that matter, motion and matter cannot possibly cause thought. 307 00:38:08,710 --> 00:38:17,270 So here are some relevant passages to consider the matter, April or anything may produce anything. 308 00:38:17,270 --> 00:38:20,990 My motion and matter and thought are constantly united, 309 00:38:20,990 --> 00:38:28,100 which being all the circumstances that enter into the idea of cause and effect, we can pronounce them cause and effect. 310 00:38:28,100 --> 00:38:32,780 The constant conjunction of objects constitutes the very essence of cause and effect. 311 00:38:32,780 --> 00:38:40,260 So this is one of the most important sections where Hume applies his analysis of causation. 312 00:38:40,260 --> 00:38:44,000 And this isn't sceptical. This is positive. 313 00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:52,880 He is saying a motion and matter can cause fault because we have constant conjunction where we've got constant conjunction. 314 00:38:52,880 --> 00:39:06,380 We can attribute causation. All objects which are found to be constantly conjoined are upon that account, only to be regarded as causes and effects. 315 00:39:06,380 --> 00:39:16,130 So we've seen this argument before, the other important section where Hume will apply his analysis of causation to draw positive conclusions. 316 00:39:16,130 --> 00:39:21,230 Also, incidentally about mental causation comes in the discussion of liberty and necessity. 317 00:39:21,230 --> 00:39:27,050 That's in treaties two, three, one and two three two. We're not going to be covering that further. 318 00:39:27,050 --> 00:39:44,740 But I did discuss that in the first lecture. There's a slightly puzzling conclusion to one four five, which suggests some last minute editing. 319 00:39:44,740 --> 00:39:53,590 So. A point about the treaties is that Hume initially wrote it to include some discussions of religion. 320 00:39:53,590 --> 00:40:04,000 It does have some barbs against religion. We saw when he was discussing the imagination a few lectures ago, he illustrates, 321 00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:10,120 for example, Association of Ideas with various religious examples like, 322 00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:17,560 you know, when we go to someone who goes to the Holy Land is influenced by it and it enlivens their belief and that sort of thing. 323 00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:26,200 But we know from a letter to Henry Hume Lord Keynes in 1737, which was two years before the treatise was published, 324 00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:29,920 we know that Hume was in the process of taking out of the treaties, 325 00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:37,550 various religious discussions or rather anti-religious discussions, notably on miracles. 326 00:40:37,550 --> 00:40:44,750 And he actually sent Canes a copy of his discussion of miracles that he'd taken out of the treaties at that point. 327 00:40:44,750 --> 00:40:53,780 Well, we have a clear indication here that the treaty was originally going to have a discussion of the immortality of the soul. 328 00:40:53,780 --> 00:41:00,490 But it came out, but there's just a mention to it in the last couple of sentences. 329 00:41:00,490 --> 00:41:09,070 If you want to know what Hume had to say about the immortality of the so, he wrote an essay on that topic, which was only published posthumously. 330 00:41:09,070 --> 00:41:12,400 He considered it too dangerous to publish during his life. 331 00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:21,460 It's very interesting and and succinct essay, a nice epitome of many of the principles of his philosophy. 332 00:41:21,460 --> 00:41:30,310 OK. Finally, today we get on to personal identity. It's one of the very famous sections of the treaties. 333 00:41:30,310 --> 00:41:41,350 He uses the coffee principle again to deny that we have any idea of the self that conforms to anything like the conventional understanding of it, 334 00:41:41,350 --> 00:41:47,680 a self which retains perfect identity and simplicity through time. 335 00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:52,870 When I look inside myself, I don't find any impression of self. 336 00:41:52,870 --> 00:41:55,690 But I find plenty of other perceptions. 337 00:41:55,690 --> 00:42:03,370 I always stumble on some particular perception or other of heat or cold light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. 338 00:42:03,370 --> 00:42:13,140 I never can catch myself at any time without a perception and never observe anything but the perception. 339 00:42:13,140 --> 00:42:22,660 So if we try to think of what legitimate idea of self we could have, it ends up just being a bundle of perceptions. 340 00:42:22,660 --> 00:42:37,280 Just like our legitimate idea of a substance like gold, for example, turns out being to be a bundle of qualities that we associate with gold. 341 00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:46,850 So the genuine idea of self is nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, 342 00:42:46,850 --> 00:42:57,110 and they're in a perpetual flux and movement. The mind is a kind of theatre where several perceptions successively make their appearance. 343 00:42:57,110 --> 00:43:02,350 There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different. 344 00:43:02,350 --> 00:43:10,240 The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They the successive perceptions only that constitute the mind. 345 00:43:10,240 --> 00:43:16,710 Nor have we the most distant notion of the place where these scenes are represented. 346 00:43:16,710 --> 00:43:27,300 So he seems to be saying that the mind is literally just a bundle of perceptions because that seems to be the only conception that we can form of it. 347 00:43:27,300 --> 00:43:32,930 Now think back to where Hume was saying that, you can imagine. 348 00:43:32,930 --> 00:43:35,720 Perceptions existing without a mind. 349 00:43:35,720 --> 00:43:45,500 Well, if a mine just is a bundle of perceptions, then you can imagine there being different sized bundles and why not a bundle of just one of them? 350 00:43:45,500 --> 00:43:50,930 And one can be removed from a bundle and still exist, apparently. 351 00:43:50,930 --> 00:43:56,390 It's not obviously a coherent view, but. 352 00:43:56,390 --> 00:44:09,700 There we have it. Now, when Hume comes to explain why we think of ourselves as having a united, coherent continuing self, 353 00:44:09,700 --> 00:44:15,760 he uses much the same kind of reasoning that he's used in the case of external objects. 354 00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:22,900 Because we with external objects, we see a similarity of resemblance between our different perceptions, 355 00:44:22,900 --> 00:44:29,350 and we imagine we have the fiction of some continuing thing binding them together. 356 00:44:29,350 --> 00:44:34,820 Will we do the same kind of thing with the mind? 357 00:44:34,820 --> 00:44:44,910 And he talks also about the similarity or the unity over time that we attribute to plants and animals. 358 00:44:44,910 --> 00:44:52,230 Because we see them changing very slightly over time, we have resembling perceptions, 359 00:44:52,230 --> 00:44:58,710 but also coherent perceptions as an animal grows and so forth or a plant grows. 360 00:44:58,710 --> 00:45:05,820 And this gradual change facilitates the transition of the mind from one object to another, from one perception to another over time, 361 00:45:05,820 --> 00:45:12,060 in other words, and renders its passage as smooth as if it contemplated one continued object. 362 00:45:12,060 --> 00:45:20,130 So the feeling of contemplating a gradually changing thing is to us very similar 363 00:45:20,130 --> 00:45:32,900 to the feeling of contemplating something that is completely unchanging. And so we naturally confuse the two. 364 00:45:32,900 --> 00:45:42,650 So again, as with external objects, part of us realises that the perceptions are not the same, 365 00:45:42,650 --> 00:45:48,860 but we are imaginatively very tempted to think of them as the same. 366 00:45:48,860 --> 00:45:52,730 So we resolve this absurdity by feigning, in other words, 367 00:45:52,730 --> 00:45:59,300 coming up with a fiction of some new and unintelligible principle that connects the objects together. 368 00:45:59,300 --> 00:46:05,270 Thus, we run into the notion of a soul and self and substance to disguise the variation. 369 00:46:05,270 --> 00:46:13,430 So again, we're coming up with a kind of fiction, an imaginary thing that somehow provides a unity to these perceptions, 370 00:46:13,430 --> 00:46:18,260 which we recognise on one level are in fact different from each other over time. 371 00:46:18,260 --> 00:46:28,100 But we all see our imaginations are seduced by the similarity or the gradual change to assume that there is something united there, 372 00:46:28,100 --> 00:46:40,210 something that self identical over time. Hume corroborates this by a reference to the circumstances in which we are inclined 373 00:46:40,210 --> 00:46:46,030 to do this when changes are proportionately small and when they're very gradual, 374 00:46:46,030 --> 00:46:54,700 we're far more likely to think of this kind of identity over time than when the changes a sudden. 375 00:46:54,700 --> 00:47:00,160 Personal identity turns out to be just another instance of the same kind of thing. 376 00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:01,030 The identity, 377 00:47:01,030 --> 00:47:14,650 which we ascribe to the mind of man is only a fictitious one and of a like kind with that which we attribute to vegetables and animal bodies. 378 00:47:14,650 --> 00:47:23,680 So our notions of personal identity proceed entirely from the smooth and uninterrupted progress of the thought along a train of connected ideas. 379 00:47:23,680 --> 00:47:29,800 Again, just the same kind of thing that happens with the external world. 380 00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:34,990 Contiguity plays a little role here, because he said, as we discussed in one five, 381 00:47:34,990 --> 00:47:43,810 that most of our perceptions actually don't have any physical location, so spatial contiguity as any right can't play a role. 382 00:47:43,810 --> 00:47:48,280 Temporal contiguity doesn't play much of a role because we think of ourselves as identical. 383 00:47:48,280 --> 00:48:02,230 Over a long period of time. But resemblance and causation do play a big role, and memory produces resemblance when we remember something. 384 00:48:02,230 --> 00:48:09,200 The idea of memory we take to be similar to the thing that is remembered. 385 00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:20,060 And our concern about our future, the fact that we project into the future and plan for things we think of our our future perceptions, 386 00:48:20,060 --> 00:48:28,860 that's adding an important element of causation. You've also got causation playing a role in memory. 387 00:48:28,860 --> 00:48:35,790 And memory is obviously crucial in providing our source of past perceptions. 388 00:48:35,790 --> 00:48:39,630 So there's something to write in John Locke's theory of personal identity, 389 00:48:39,630 --> 00:48:46,800 Locke had attributed personal identity to continuity of consciousness over time and hence to memory humans here, 390 00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:55,410 pointing out that memory plays a very crucial role. But of course, he's seeing it as a source of perceptions which whose similarity, 391 00:48:55,410 --> 00:49:03,030 whose resemblance and causal linkage leads us falsely to think of there being an identity there when really there isn't. 392 00:49:03,030 --> 00:49:10,310 So he's got a sceptical theory of personal identity, unlike Locke. 393 00:49:10,310 --> 00:49:13,910 Now, notoriously. 394 00:49:13,910 --> 00:49:27,290 Not that far after he had published this 21 months between end of January 17, thirty nine and end of October, beginning of November 17 40. 395 00:49:27,290 --> 00:49:38,210 Hume added an appendix to book three of the treatise on the appendix, amongst other things, contained serious doubts about personal identity. 396 00:49:38,210 --> 00:49:42,200 Upon a more strict review of the section concerning personal identity, 397 00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:47,240 I find myself involved in such a labyrinth that I must confess I neither know how to read, 398 00:49:47,240 --> 00:49:53,430 how to correct my former opinions nor how to render them consistent. 399 00:49:53,430 --> 00:50:00,510 In short, there are two principles which I cannot render consistent, nor is it in my power to renounce either of them. 400 00:50:00,510 --> 00:50:10,820 These that all are distinct perceptions of distinct existences and that the mind never perceives any real connexion amongst distinct existences. 401 00:50:10,820 --> 00:50:16,940 Did our perceptions either end here in something simple, an individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion amongst them? 402 00:50:16,940 --> 00:50:23,920 There would be no difficulty in the case. He says very little. 403 00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:29,620 About what his problem is. And he said, I can't render these two principles consistent. 404 00:50:29,620 --> 00:50:40,180 But actually, the two principles are not inconsistent. So there must be some other assumptions that he's making that cause this inconsistency. 405 00:50:40,180 --> 00:50:47,020 And this is one of those cases where scholars have been attracted in droves 406 00:50:47,020 --> 00:50:55,360 towards a textual problem precisely because of the paucity of the evidence. 407 00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:59,530 There is so little textual evidence on what Hume's problem is here. 408 00:50:59,530 --> 00:51:04,810 We've only got the section of personal identity and a few paragraphs in the appendix. 409 00:51:04,810 --> 00:51:11,860 There is lots of scope for interpreters to come up with their own view of what exactly is going on here. 410 00:51:11,860 --> 00:51:15,170 I'm not going to speculate. 411 00:51:15,170 --> 00:51:26,060 But I will draw attention to one popular idea, partly because this, I think, gives an indication of why Hume's problem is a very, very serious one. 412 00:51:26,060 --> 00:51:29,120 It's called the bundling problem. 413 00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:41,660 So Hume has explained how we are seduced into false attributions of identity because we see similarity between our various perceptions. 414 00:51:41,660 --> 00:51:49,930 And we falsely suppose them identical because our mind moves easily between them. 415 00:51:49,930 --> 00:52:00,100 OK, so that might explain why I falsely think of myself as having a simplicity when I really don't because I run over my various perceptions, 416 00:52:00,100 --> 00:52:04,900 I see a similar similarity there. My mind goes easily from one to another. 417 00:52:04,900 --> 00:52:10,080 I naturally think of myself yesterday as the same as myself now. 418 00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:22,860 But if we're thinking of personal identity at. Then the crucial question is, why do I think of myself as separate from others? 419 00:52:22,860 --> 00:52:29,700 And when I consider the various perceptions that I might be likely to confuse together. 420 00:52:29,700 --> 00:52:32,530 They only contain my own perceptions. 421 00:52:32,530 --> 00:52:43,230 And I never have the slightest inclination to conflate your perceptions with mine because I never actually perceive your perceptions, only my own. 422 00:52:43,230 --> 00:52:48,910 So in response to the question, you know? 423 00:52:48,910 --> 00:52:56,230 How do we come to believe in personal identity, humans saying we are seduced by the similarity amongst perceptions? 424 00:52:56,230 --> 00:53:03,040 The natural question to ask him is who is seduced? What is it that's making the mistake? 425 00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:09,970 It looks like you have to presuppose some self to which those perceptions appear and not other perceptions. 426 00:53:09,970 --> 00:53:18,280 In order to make any sense of the story at all. So it looks like there's a risk of real incoherence in Hume's view. 427 00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:27,510 And some people have thought that that was at the root of the problem that he's alluding to in the appendix, but it's really hard to know. 428 00:53:27,510 --> 00:53:36,090 In subsequent works, personal identity is hardly mentioned, we get a very a hint of it in the dialogues, and that's it. 429 00:53:36,090 --> 00:53:41,340 In the later work, in the enquiry, the sapra ability, that principle doesn't feature at all. 430 00:53:41,340 --> 00:53:49,680 So it may be that Hume had come to realise that his view about perceptions existing, potentially independently of a mind, is simply incoherent. 431 00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:55,170 We don't know. Unfortunately, when Hume changes his mind, he doesn't announce the fact. 432 00:53:55,170 --> 00:54:03,110 In general, he just does it silently, and we're left to wonder what his real ultimate views might have been. 433 00:54:03,110 --> 00:54:08,682 Thank you very much.